The Sherman Experience Tapes

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Review
Article Date: January 20, 2002

Product Info

Title: The Sherman Experience Tapes
Sub-title: Interviews with British Tank Veterans
Category: Cassette Audio Tapes
Compiled By: Ken Hall
Published By: Hall Graphics, 2001, 0-9541252-0-7
Release Date: Released

The Experience

In the course of his research for B-17 Flying fortress: The Mighty 8th!, Ken Hall came to appreciate the need to preserve the recollections of World War II veterans before they had all passed away. He set out to collect and preserve their memories, and the first fruit of this effort is the The Sherman Experience Tapes, 145 minutes of memories on two audio tapes.

The Sherman Experience Tapes

I approached this review with no little trepidation, fearing the possibility of a poorly recorded set of vague and meandering interviews. My fears lifted somewhat when I noticed that one of the interviewees is Ken Tout, who has written two excellent memoirs of his time as a Sherman tanker (Tank! 40 Hours of Combat, and Tanks, Advance! Normandy to the Netherlands, 1944). Fortunately, my fears were largely unfounded. The Sherman Experience Tapes have problems, but the overall package is still very good.

The Sherman Experience Tapes provides you with the recollections of eleven British Sherman tank veterans. One was an officer, the rest privates and NCOs; most come from the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, with one Regimental Sergeant-Major from the 10th Hussars.

The tapes break the interviews into small bits and arrange the bits according to a series of topics: Joining Up, Training, Introduction to Combat, Combat Part 1, Combat Part 2 (it’s split into two parts by the end of a tape), Wittmann Fallen, The Sherman Experience, Remembering, and Message to the Future. Most of these are self-explanatory; The Sherman Experience and Remembering tend to be somewhat less focused, being collections of tidbits that fit less well under more directed headings.

A Tiger destroyed by one of the men interviewed.

The tapes are advertised as an “experience”, and that they do deliver. Listening to them is somewhat akin to sitting in a veteran’s hall, listening to them swapping stories, slipping slightly randomly between threads of the conversations around you. There are plenty of tidbits to pick up, such as the gunner’s general agreement that the Sherman’s cannon’s stabilizer was worthless, or the drivers/mechanic’s noting that they spent so much time maintaining their vehicles that they were routinely excused from parade drill to continue work.

They complain about unrealistic training conducted in England, such that their tactical preparation was poor, though their technical and mechanical skills were well-honed. The interviews do provide a good sense of the randomness of combat, in the form of people killed before the rest of the tank crew had learnt their names, or Germany’s greatest tank ace being killed by Joe Ekins in the one and only action Ekins saw as a gunner.

Raamsdonk, the morning after Wally Tarrant's escape from his Sherman

The reactions to the war also find a representative sample, from some who still seem to be seeking any value in the experience to another who noted that, “The war was a wonderful experience except when you lost your pals.” One went on to dedicate their lives to good works, while another says the war made it “hard to believe in anything”.

Alongside their talk of recurring nightmares from the “wonderful experience”, you’ll also hear their amazement at the welcome they are still given from the French, Dutch, and Belgians they liberated. Equally, there bubbles forth their bitterness at the lack of respect they feel they are shown in Britain.

Production Quality

Hall committed one error in making these tapes: the recordings are sometimes second-rate. Background noise, in the form of things such as clinking plates and other conversations, is often present on the tapes, making it difficult to hear the tanker being interviewed. Furthermore, the veterans occasionally fail to speak clearly.

While it’s true you need to make people comfortable so they can talk, Hall ought to have found a means of doing this in a place where background noise would be absent and unclear statements could be repeated, instead of what often sounds like a pub or Legion hall. Hopefully, there will be future installments in the series, and hopefully those will be clearer.

Some of the men interviewed on a Tiger they destroyed.

My second complaint is one you may not share. Almost all the interviews have been broken up into small bits that fit into the various topical headings. If you simply want to float along in the sea of memories, then this isn’t a problem. Personally, I found two problems in this.

First, it was hard to keep track of who each person speaking was, and what they had done that I’d heard about previously, a problem exacerbated by the decision not to identify speakers on the tapes themselves (the tape box insert identifies speakers in order of first appearance, but it is still hard to tell and sometimes it appears to be wrong.) As a result, the recollections became much more anonymous, instead of being distinct individual experiences.

Second, breaking up the interviews into bits tends to break up the listener’s ability to make sense of the tales being told. Thus, for example, you hit a section of the tapes in which nearly every story tidbit concerns “how my tank got blown up”. It’s gripping stuff, but sometimes leaves you wondering what happened before the enemy round hit the tank.

By contrast, the fifteen minutes concerning the destruction of Wittmann’s Tiger force has three interviews, all completely unbroken. These three interviews, including one with the company commander, Tom Boardman, and one with the Sherman Firefly gunner who killed Wittmann, Joe Ekins, provide lengthy, vivid, and coherent narratives of the action as they experienced it, allowing the listener to ride along on their tactical thinking as well as their feelings.

Worth The Effort

Despite these complaints with respect to production and organziation, these tapes are worth the effort; so brew a pot of coffee, pop in the tapes, sit back, and let the words wash over you. Some of them will haunt you.

Reunion at Bovingtion Tank Museum

Many thanks to Ken Hall for providing photos to illustrate the review.

For purchase info, go to Hall Graphics.



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